In 1945 Anne Dangar travelled to La Borne, a pottery in Bourges operated by the potter Jacqueline Lerat and her husband Jacques. Dangar had met 21-year-old Lerat (née Bouvet) as an apprentice potter at the Centre artisanal in Mâcon during the war, and they corresponded regularly following her return to Sablons. Dangar provided young Lerat advice on how to navigate male-dominated pottery workshops writing in 1942: ‘don’t let the potters ignore you because you’re a woman … I know the men do not want to take women seriously in pottery but insist that you have more than the necessary qualities for a potter than two men.’
Over the fortnight she spent with Lerat, Dangar produced this multipaneled sundial with the signs of the zodiac and the times of day spiralling from the centre. She departed from the vibrant cubist works for which she was now well regarded and used the hand-building methods and unpredictable salt glazes traditional to the Bourges region to create grès au sel (salt-glazed stoneware).
Although not stylistically cubist this imagery was a tangible link between her cubist philosophies and the natural world. Astrology’s associations with the celestial movements of the Sun, Moon and planets parallels her belief in rotation and the spiral as spiritual motifs. The composition was completed by the incorporation of a quote on time describing the eternal nature of the present by Saint Augustine, a phrase that repeats itself in circular perpetuity around the edge of the dial.
Il est un jour qui ne commence pas avec la fi n d’hier pour le comme toujours de demain mais qui est cessent aujourd’hui.
Your today does not yield with tomorrow, for neither does it follow yesterday.
